In a Fox News interview Gorka cited Trump's Twitter account as being able to convince China to act on North Korea

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August 3, 2017 4:55PM (UTC)

In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, White House aide Sebastian Gorka said that he believes President Donald Trump's tweets will help convince China to solve the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

Fox News host Chris Hemmer read a piece of an editorial from China Daily, the English-language daily newspaper published in China, which stated: "Trump is wrong in his assumption that Beijing can single-handedly handle the matter. As Beijing has said, repeatedly, it does not have the kind of 'control' over Pyongyang that the U.S. president believes it does."

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The editorial also said that all of the "stakeholders need to work more closely together in order to find a way to guarantee peace on the peninsula."

"What card left do you have to get China to act?" Hemmer asked.

"We have, you know, the president's Twitter feed," Gorka said. "We have the most powerful man in the world making it very clear that we came out of the Mar-a-Lago summit with very high hopes — let's look at the facts."

According to Gorka, people should "forget op-ed pieces in newspapers across the globe," even if they are international newspapers that may provide a different, and perhaps, a much-needed perspective regarding heightened tensions between all parties involved in the Korean Peninsula.

He went on to cite that China controls 80 percent of imports that go into North Korea, and said it's a "massive point of leverage."

"The president has made it clear, he is not satisfied," Gorka continued. "He is disappointed with what Bejing has done since Mar-A-Largo and he wishes to see them step up to the plate."

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Hemmer seemed almost baffled by Gorka's first statement, and asked him, "with all due respect, can a Twitter feed change the mind of those leading China?"

"If you can win a U.S. election with it, I think it’s pretty powerful," Gorka replied.

But the White House aide hasn't always felt this way. In the past he told CNN's Chris Cuomo that Trump's tweets were just "social media" and not "policy," after the president used the bombing in Manchester to justify the need for his travel ban.

"To judge national security," Gorka said during the interview, "in a time of things like the Manchester and London attacks based upon social media statements is irresponsible of you, Chris."

Charlie May

Charlie May is a news writer at Salon. You can find him on Twitter at @charliejmay